theintercept.com,
Sat 09/17:
Detroit Cops Want $7 Million in Covid Relief Money for Surveillance Microphones
Detroit’s city council will soon vote on whether to spend millions in federal cash meant to ease the economic pains of the coronavirus pandemic on ShotSpotter, a controversial surveillance technology critics say is invasive, discriminatory, and fundamentally broken. Once the company’s black-box algorithm thinks it has identified a gunshot, it sends a recording of the sound — and the moments preceding and following it — to a team of human analysts. Detroit already has a $1.5 million contract with ShotSpotter, a California company, to deploy the microphones in select areas, but city officials, including Mayor Mike Duggan, insist that substantially expanding the audio surveillance network will deter gun slayings. Some cities have chosen to use a portion of these funds for ShotSpotter’s technology,” she said. Asked about Detroit’s system, Olive said the city owns the data collected by ShotSpotter. ShotSpotter’s opponents in Detroit agreed that gun violence is a serious problem but said Covid-19 relief money would be far better spent on addressing the social ills that form the basis of crime. They very likely could have prevented two and probably three tragedies had they had an immediate notice,” Duggan said. ShotSpotter even published a video webinar guiding police through the process of obtaining Covid money to buy the surveillance tech. We have broad language, and we can really personalize it for whatever you need.” ( Related ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄
Despite the objections from community groups, Biden himself outlined uses like this for Covid relief funds. “ A series of academic studies into ShotSpotter’s efficacy reached the same conclusion: Loud noise alerts don’t result in fewer gun killings.
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